


Reconstruction

by SuperLizard



Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, BDSM, Character Death, Compartmentalizing, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Feels, ForestFire - Freeform, Group Therapy, Hair-pulling, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Mild Gore, Sex, Soft Lancelot, Talking Trees, Teamwork, Teeth, Torture, Tough Gawain, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25824718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperLizard/pseuds/SuperLizard
Summary: Immediately after the battle, many strong-willed but defeated survivors met on the beach and decided how to move forward, who to rescue, and how to keep on surviving. Our heros find each other and themselves. Rescues, midnight rides, talking trees, time magic, and fireworks. A joining and a funeral. Merlin snark throughout.Lots of references to the original Arthurian legends.Exploratory writing that luckily tied up neatly in the end.Last chapter is NC17/21+/Rated X
Relationships: Arthur/Nimue (Cursed), Gawain | The Green Knight/The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 85





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I wish I knew where this was going.

The chaos of a thousand displaced people was more subdued than it should have been. There simply wasn't enough energy left for panic. In time, she knew, there would be the psychological fall-out of the attack. When the dead were recovered and the destruction was illuminated by their pyres, then there would be panic attacks, gnashing of teeth, collapses, all of the emotional vomiting of a people chronically diseased with fear. The queen had been promising, and before her they'd had a general to rally around and piece them back together when they broke down. 

Now there was an old war advisor with a soul burdened by experience, a sorceress with a questionable lease on the realm of the living, a drunken wizard with a hateful relic, a permanently-on captain of a handfull of raiders and ships, a former sell-sword with... Well, she wasn't certain what exactly Arthur brought to the table, but he seemed determined to hang around. Kaze wouldn't turn down an extra sword hand, not when so many were lying on the beach.

They couldn't even manage a tent between them, and the ships weren't ready for passengers yet, so they stood around on the beach and spoke in hushed tones, depending on the road of the ocean to obscure their voices.

"We have a lot of wounds to tend and a lot of dead to burn. We can figure out where to move the living while we're managing those." Kaze looked around at the others; if they argued, she wouldn't have the energy to argue back. 

They must have sensed it, and didn't. 

"We should find out how many healers are left," the raider captain -- Guen? -- agreed. "Pym would be best to direct the efforts, if we can find her. If she's alive."

"If she's not, I will do it," Arthur volunteered.

Kaze nodded.

"I will help the dead to pass," Morgana stated. It wasn't an offer.

"My crew and I can help to collect them, and we will find what we can to build pyres," Given offered. "We are used to war dead."

Kaze nodded. "Thank you."

They departed.

Kaze and Merlin stood in silence.

"You look sick, old man," she told him.

He nodded.

"You should see a healer."

He shook his head.

Kaze trsked. "We are ruined for a leader."

He nodded.

A high shout battled with the ocean, incomprehensible at first, but repeating. They turned to see a horse walking towards them, a slouched figure on its back.

"Kaze!" the boy's voice resolved as they approached.

"Squirrel?" She shouted back. Against hope, she leaned onto her toes and tried to see who was on the horse with him. Did Nimue's ransom offer succeed? Did they have their general back?

The horse stopped. The slouched figure fell sideways and landed with a muffled thump in the sand. 

She rushed forward, but knew something was off. The figure was too slight, the cloak was wrong. She pushed him onto his back, then withdrew as if from a bad smell. She turned back to Squirrel, almost angry.

"What the fuck?" she demanded, frustrated with the wrong result.

Squirrel shrugged tiredly.


	2. A long walk on the beach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaze takes an exceptionally long walk on the beach. The mages snipe at each other. No one is happy.

Pym didn't have any energy left for smiling. She wanted to. She reached for some ray of brightness somewhere in the depths of her heart, where previously she had always found it even when the world was dark. It wasn't there anymore. So instead, she clutches the talisman left her by Dof and tries to think about his smile. It was the best she could do.

And it was all that kept her from fainting when Kaze dumped the unconscious body of an assassin on the sand, in line with the other wounded.

"See what you can do with this," she grumbled. "He brought Percival back from their camp."

Pym took a deep breath and reached for smelling salts.

"It's true, he did," Squirrel insisted, having followed Kaze on tired feet. He lingered somewhat behind, out of the way for once.

She waved the salts under his nose, and he came back to consciousness with a wrinkled nose and a sneeze. "I don't understand," Pym replied, mostly to Squirrel. She stowed the salts and searched for willow bark. "Why would Nimue ransom him?"

"The green knight ransomed me," Lancelot rasped.

Pym and Kaze paused to wince in unison. 

"Damnit," Kaze hissed.

"He will have had a good reason," Pym allowed, offering the willow bark to Lancelot. "Put that between your teeth and your lip. Hold it there. Don't chew."

He did as he was told, but gagged a little.

"He's fey," Squirrel offered. "And he saved me from the men in masks."

Kaze studied him for a moment. "Ash folk."

"So I am," he confirmed.

Pym gestured. "Sit up. Strip. We need to wrap your ribs before they travel around."

He winced but obeyed.

"Have you left them behind you completely?" Kaze demanded.

"I am ransomed completely. I will never go back. Perhaps I can do penance for my crimes against your people."

Squirrel objected vocally.

"Our people," he corrected quietly.

"You may have ample opportunity," Kaze replied grimly. "You know of the paladin's plans? What happened in the camp?"

He sighed and held still while Pym synched the bandages and started cleaning a still-bleeding gash on his face. "I know some. The plans I knew won't have any relevance now. The arrangement with Uther is broken, and the arrangement with Cumber. Playing both sides resulted in no victory."

"The green knight?" Kaze pressed.

Squirrel answered her. "He's dead."

Lancelot flinched, then nodded. "Likely."

Tears fell finally. The little boy wrapped his hands in his shirt and sank to the ground, but didn't sob. "He made me a knight before they found me. He died thinking I was going to be next."

Pym abandoned her work for a moment and wrapped her arms around him, stroked his back. "But you weren't."

He sniffled into her shirt and said nothing.

Lancelot watched them, unreadable. "I am a tracker," he said, seemly out of turn. "I might find your queen even if she is still in their custody."

Kaze shook her head at him with a steady glare. "You should rest and heal for now. We will decide what to do with you. Hand over your weapons."

He tilted his head in assent and handed over his sword plus a variety of knives.

Kaze received them. "I will return," she announced gruffly, and left just as unceremoniously.

Morgana appeared next to her without a sound. "It wasn't a bad idea."

She hissed, missing half a step and pulling a face. "Don't do that."

"Sorry, I'm... new to this."

"You are forgiven. What need have we for the Queen's body, if it was lost as you say? She can still be the queen that disappeared, not the queen who died."

"She's not dead. Not exactly." Morgana paused, then added, "I would know."

Kaze raised her eyebrows. "You would know. So you want to look for Nimue?"

She nodded once. "Let me take Arthur and the weeping monk. I can at least keep them out of your way. We will see what we can find."

"Find me a leader." She met Morgana's gaze directly and meaningfully. "I don't care which one you find. I do not want this job." She dragged her wrist across her brow, wiping the sweat before it could reach her eyes. "Night is falling. We need to light the pyres. The smoke and flame will keep animals away from the smell of blood for one night."

"Then we can get the living on the ships," Merlin agreed from her other side.

Kaze growled at him. "Not you too. You are like demons."

"Were you just going to go without me?" Merlin demanded.

Morgana pulled an innocent look. "No? No. Of course not."

He glared for a long moment.

"Fine, yes, but just because I don't know yet if we will succeed or what we will find." She raised her hands a little, a human gesture that seemed somehow out of place for her now. "All I know is that she isn't dead, I don't know if she's ... well... alive. I don't know how to explain it yet. It's all very complicated."

Merlin raised an eyebrow. "I'll get my cloak."

"Tomorrow." Kaze looked between them, eyes burning. "We need you here for these people tonight. This will be the hardest night."

They had the good manners to look ashamed.

She growled at them once more for good measure and set off across the beach at speed, putting as much distance between her and the mages as she could manage. Not that it would matter, with the way the two just... appeared.

The Red Spear captain caught her gaze and nodded once. No guidance needed.

Kaze liked her.

The raiders and scattered fey who could were still able, were piling the dead upon the meagre wood that could be got from the tide or the nearest trees, upon broken shields and polearms. The wood was wet, the air was wet, the bodies were wet. They would need oil to start the fires.

Thank the Hidden that the winds were blowing steady towards the sea. The smell would be intolerable. She would gather the living to say their words and pay their respects, then send them away. No need for them to see more gruesomeness.

She found Arthur pushing a barrel of tar up the beach. He looked so tired that she could almost mistake him for one of their own. In spite of the day, and what he'd found out from Merlin and Morgana about Nimue's end, he was still working, still contributing to their survival.

He paused and waited for her to say something.

"Thank you," she said, startled at the words that she spoke.

He also looked startled.

"The wizard and the sorceress are going to look for Nimue," she informed him. "You are going as well. Tomorrow."

His face fell. "We should make sure her body doesn't fall into their hands. They will use it as a trophy." He nodded. "I am glad to help her."

Kaze stared at him for awhile longer, but not with anger. "You are a better man than I expected you to be."

He looked startled again. 

She left him there with the noise from the ocean.


	3. Death is a River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroes find the time.

"Where did you last see her?"

Merlin, Morgana, and Arthur started at Lancelot with expressions ranging from careful to expecting him to sprout another head.

He waited patiently. He was very good at waiting for people to get over their disbelief.

The other exchanged looks, and silently Arthur was voted to speak first. "You suggest we go back to the tallest waterfall in the land and hope to find her, what, wedged between some rocks?"

"Stranger things have happened," he replied with an undercurrent of sass, "No however. I expect us to go back to the tallest waterfall in the land and then follow the water until we see blood, bent foliage, tracks..."

They exchanged looks again.

"I am a tracker," he reminded them, "This is what I do."

Morgana shrugged at Merlin. Merlin raised an eyebrow at Arthur. Arthur turned back to Lancelot. "Yes, that's a good plan."

"Lead on then," he prompted. "I can almost smell the sunlight, it's getting late."

Merlin held out his arms, the still-sheathed sword gripped tightly in his right hand and staff in the left. "Hold on." 

Morgana looped an arm around his and offered her other arm to Lancelot. Arthur clenched his jaw around whatever retort he had and diplomatically copied her.

"We're going to hold hands and sing our way there?" Lancelot wondered, not un-sarcastically.

"I am a wizard," Merlin replied laconically. "This is what I do."

Lancelot pursed his lips, but obediently linked arms with Morgana and Arthur. "So do we--"

Space bent around them like a cage of glass, shards splitting and rearranging and rejoining until they were sliding along the edge of one of them, then as suddenly as it had begun it ended, and the ground seemed higher than it had been. Their feet slammed into it as if they were landing from a high jump, though they hadn't really left the ground at all.

Merlin grunted and sagged forward, but the others caught him, helped him regain his balance. 

"Nimue was able to do some limited healing with her magic--" Morgan's began.

"I am not her," Merlin cut her short, before she could form the question. "And she wasn't using the sword to heal. She was calling the Hidden. The Hidden don't answer me anymore."

She nodded, filing the information away silently.

Lancelot and Arthur looked around at their new surroundings. They were collected on the shore at the foot of the waterfall, mud and gravel perturbed only by their landing. The vegetation to either side of the bank was undisturbed, the sounds of the birds and wildlife cut short by their dramatic arrival.

Their tracker broke the circle and ranged along the pool, looking and sniffing and listening. Arthur followed at a short distance, both trying to stay out of the way, but also making a quiet noise. Biting back a chuckle.

Lancelot paused, turned to him. When he didn't explain himself, Lancelot was forced to ask, "Well? What?"

Arthur smiled a little. "I'm sorry. It's just, your cloak didn't entirely make it."

With a scowl, he slipped it from his shoulders and turned it to examine the damage. Sure enough, it was abbreviated at waist-height. His scowl deepened and he glared over to Merlin. "Really?!"

Merlin didn't change his neutral, dour expression, and continued to lean on his staff. "Non-linear travel is not an exact science. More of an art."

Arthur averted his gaze to the ground but couldn't help there barest hint of a smile.

Lancelot maintained the glare as he rolled the cloak up, stuffed it into his pack. When Merlin didn't react at all, he turned back to his work. "We should continue along the bank as long as we can. Stay back from me several yards. I don't want you disturbing any trail."

Arthur nodded politely. They set out.

The sun came up. Going was slow. At least twice, Lancelot picked up the scent of a fey, and tracked it for several minutes away from the water until announcing, "It's not her," and then they backtracked to the river and started again. The sun moved over head. They paused for water and food, neither of which Lancelot partook, and for Morgana to ask Merlin questions he didn't answer. They continued. The sun descended. 

Just as Arthur was going to suggest they find a place to make camp, Lancelot turned towards the river and dashed down to the eater's edge on fox-like feet. He crouched and put his face to the soil. 

"Her blood," he announced, voice like a thundercrack.

"Did she come ashore here?" Merlin asked, voice just as sharp.

"No. This is clotted around some leaf matter, but it's not adhered. This washed up. She was still in the water here. Maybe an hour ago."

They moved a lot faster then, and the current if the river slowed. It widened, and became more shallow. It split into two, then into four. Lancelot guided them across it to follow one fork, then another. Merlin became more and more distraught.

"No," he muttered under his breath. "No, no no, no."

Morgana watched him carefully but did not ask.

The sun sank inexorably behind the horizon and the shadows in the woods deepened. Lancelot stopped. The others gathered around him.

"The trail is confused here," he reported, puzzled. "The blood smell gets quickly older and then disappears. Then there are other smells-- smells which the living make-- but not a complete set of them. And she hasn't come ashore yet this entire way. I don't understand it."

"We are well into the forest of Brocéliande," Merlin announced gravely.

The other three stared at him blankly, waiting for more.

"The ensorcelled forest of Brocéliande?"

Arthur and Morgana exchanged glances, then shook their heads.

"The-- no? Really?" He dragged his palm over his face. "What do they teach young people these days?"

Lancelot said nothing, well used to waiting for pedantic old men to come to the point.

"This end of the river is Time," he explained. "The first one we crossed, the one that smelled like rotting moss and feet was Grief. The other two forks are Forgetting and Ruin. I mean, you, surely--" he gestured to Morgana.

"It's my first time being a reaper of souls," she excused herself. "I've never even been to this part of the country."

Merlin sagged against his staff and chuckled bitterly. "What a sorry bunch we are."

After a moments consideration, Arthur spoke up with an improbable fondness. "You know, if Gawain were here, he'd tell us we were doing unusually well, considering."

Lancelot exhaled sharply, the wind knocked out of him. 

Morgana closed her eyes and bowed her head for a moment. "That... Wow, Arthur, you still really don't know how to read a crowd."

Merlin stood up straight and marched past them, along what was left of the river as it became a lake. "This," he called back over his shoulder, expecting them to follow, "Is Llyn Ogwen. It has a couple of other names, but I warn you not to just step in it."

They indeed followed.

"Why?" Lancelot asked suspiciously. "Is it magical, too?"

Merlin stopped at a small spur that allowed him to stand with water on three sides and his back to the forest. He turned his head slightly, his face a portrait of sorrow. "Extremely."

Before they could react, the wizard threw the sword as hard as he could into the lake, and howled a bear-howl of grief.


	4. A long rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our heroes find that only time can heal all wounds. Arthur is like a golden retriever.  
> Morgana is conflicted.  
> Lancelot is awestruck by Arthur's beautiful love interest, which let's face it, is a motif on its own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: group therapy.

Morgana watched a second time as someone chucked the Sword of Power as far as they could, and clenched her hands to prevent an audible facepalm..

Merlin's howl continued across the lake as he buried his head in his hands. It bounced from shore to shore before it faded. The ripples left in the water from the sword's fall reached them and reflected, dissipated. Everything seemed to take just slightly longer than it should have; the tree branches swayed slightly slower, the lake rippling almost to a stop. Then all of it did stop, and the woods and the lake fell deathly silent.

Then the sword emerged from the water, clutched in a woman's hand. A moment later, an arm, then a forehead, and step by step, Nimue walked along the lakebed to the shore.

Merlin unfolded and looked up at her, but did not seem as thrilled as a father finding his daughter alive. Instead, he simply held out his arms and let her come to him, wrap her arms around him in return. 

"Welcome home, Father," she whispered to him.

"This is not how I envisioned bringing you here," he admitted. "I thought--" he giggled, a little hystrically, "--I thought there would be more time."

"We have all the time in the world," she answered, smiling sadly. She looked up at them, and the others could see that there was something indescribably but unmistakably old about her. Her appearance was the same, pale features and large eyes, but something in her expression and posture was now ancient.

"How long has it been here," Morgana asked, "since you fell?"

Nimue smiled, but this time it was more of pressing her lips together in a way that incidentally happened to turn up at the sides. "I'm not certain. Years? Tens of years? There are no seasons here, and I cannot leave." She released her father and examined his face. "You are still wounded."

He watched her but said nothing.

She took his arm. "Come into the lake. If you are with me, it cannot keep you."

His eyes widened. "You can grant me entrance to the lake?"

Now her smile became sincere, younger. "I am the _queen_ of this lake. This is _my lake._ "

He stared with open wonder. He turned back to the others. "Stay. On. The shore."

Arthur was staring at Nimue. Lancelot was staring at them both. Morgana nodded and gestured to them. "I'll watch these two."

Merlin let himself be led into the water.

A long moment passed.

"Sorry," Lancelot broke the silence. "What in hell is happening?"

"We found Nimue, she is the lady of an enchanted lake-- Llyn Ogwen, I guess-- and she's healing Merlin." Morgana picked at her sleeve a bit impatiently.

Lancelot looked up at the sky, then down at the ground, then at the lake, processing. "Hm."

"Also, time stopped."

"What?"

She shrugged. "I don't know if Nimue's doing it or the lake is doing it or the woods are doing it or if there just wasn't enough time for it to keep passing here or maybe we're at the edge of some sort of magical singularity, I'm not really the right kind of sorceress."

"Time can stop?" Arthur finally was able to ask.

"I guess so."

They looked around at the too-still trees and the unmoving waters if the lake. Arthur lifted a foot--

"NO."

\--and put it back down. "I think I liked the regular magic better."

The water began to move again, then the surface broke and the wizard and the witch walked to the shore from the depths. The water didn't seem to drag against them at all. Nimue didn't release Merlin's arm until he was completely ashore.

He pulled his robe open to examine the wound. Where it had been was now unmarred flesh. He looked to Nimue, impressed. "Is this the lake's magic, or your mother's line, or the Hidden, or--?"

"It is my inheritance. The lake is like a spool. Time flows into it, but never out. So I can work magic for a thousand years and it happens in an instant. It's... Difficult to explain."

Arthur waited until they had embraced one more time, before he cleared his throat politely. "Nimue, I-"

"I know," she answered fondly.

He seemed surprised for a moment, but smiled fondly back. "Thank you."

"I have seen many paths for each of you, and the only path that doesn't change is yours, Arthur." She turned to Morgana. "But I choose to trust you." She held out the sword. "You will make the decision." 

Morgana hadn't liked what her mind had whispered to her, seeing Nimue walk out of the lake with the sword in her hand. Hadn't liked what she'd immediately considered. But suddenly it didn't matter, because Nimue had sidestepped that darkness like it was nothing more than a squeaky stair. She stepped forward and accepted the fabled sword.

"They all have so much to prove," Nimue whispered. "They're all so angry and they grieve. You will know the one who can bear it, because you've seen it all, too, haven't you?"

Morgana took a breath. "Nimue, I'm-"

She nodded. "Cursed. It's a theme."

Merlin laughed, the hysterical edge still there.

Morgana pulled her into a hug, swaying back and forth a little.

"I've missed you," Nimue laughed.

She let go and wiped tears off her face with her sleeve. "Why does this all just get weirder?"

Nimue smiled again. Then she looked up to the last member of the party. "Lancelot."

He started. "I don't recall telling you---"

"I'm standing in a lake made of time in a forest made of magic, if I told you I could smell your name, would you believe me?"

"Probably not," he snarked, "I just washed the last one off me two nights ago."

"With the blood of another and the tears of a child," she clapped back.

He closed his mouth so hard that his teeth clicked audibly.

She held out a hand to him. "Come into the lake, monk. Let us wash the past off you. Let's clear those whispers from your mind, so that you can hear clearly the voices of those who will love you."

He exhaled sharply. "How-- the-- whispers of--

She gestured at the lake. "Time. Magic. Just come over here, would you."

Lancelot was short-circuiting slightly. He did hear whispers almost constantly, the voices of people from his past, the shouting and abuse becoming the same thing in his mind as kindness, the violence the same thing as love. But something about her outstretched hand, the water as a baptism that wasn't a baptism, and offered to him after the Green Knight had died for his sins. "I... Can't."

Her smile became sad, as if she was listening to his decision as it happened. "There is no one to stop you. You can do as you wish. You are free."

"No," he objected, angry without understanding why. "No, I am a servant. I... I want to do what is _right."_

"See my hand," she commanded. "Reach out your hand and come to my side."

The words struck Lancelot like a physical blow.

"Stop doubting and believe."

He wobbled towards her like a newborn deer, face incredulous. It was so incongruous with his usual forbidding glare that she fought to suppress a smile, knowing that it would break her hold over him. He reached out a hand and she took it, linked her arm with his, and led him into the lake. He watched her face the entire way down, not caring where he was being led.

As soon as they were under the water, the others retreated up the shore and rested on dry ground. Merlin shed his robes and laid them out to dry, emptied his boots of lake water, and then looked to Morgana. "Better you than me, to be perfectly fucking honest."

"You're the only one who doesn't want it," she replied immediately, "which means you're the one who should have it."

"No thank you."

"You don't get to decide, she gave the sword to me."

Arthur frowned. "If it will stop you arguing, you could give it to me--"

"NO," they both snapped in unison.

He closed his eyes and sighed, resigned to listening to them bicker for an eternity.

The water parted yet again, and Minute returned Lancelot to them, standing straighter and with his shoulders back and ash streaking down both cheeks. His face even had a little healthy color to it. Once they came ashore, he fell to his knees at her feet.

"Notre Dame du Lac," he called her, "I am yours to command." 

She snorted and nudged him with one foot. "Get up. You're being weird."

He scrambled to obey.

"There are things in that mind that I couldn't heal," she admitted. "But I fixed all that I could. You will have to work at it for the rest of your life."

"I am forever grateful. Let me be your servant," he offered.

"I will not make you a knight until you have done me a favor," she refused.

"Anything."

"Go back to where King Uther made his camp, and retrieve the one who ransomed you. Bring his body here."

He rocked back on his heels. "My lady, he... He will not have survived."

Morgana cleared her throat awkwardly.

Nimue raised at eyebrow at him.

He looked back and forth between them. "You mean to say--"

"Yes," Nimue she answered impatiently, "I mean to say what I just said. I interred him in the ground at the camp, held in time and space in that one moment. I cannot very well go and get him, so you will have to bring him to me."

Arthur lurched forward and climbed to his feet. "Gawain's alive?!"

"He is."

He rounded on Morgana. "I can't believe you didn't mention this!"

She scowled. "I didn't know he was alive, just that he wasn't dead. Look, there's a lot of different ways to exist, and alive and dead aren't the only ones." Morgana stood and paced. "It's all very complicated."

Arthur got in her way. "Hey. Stop." 

She stopped, but frowned at his presumption that he could order her around.

"I don't get it, and I probably never will, but I believe you. And I'll always try."

Morgana's jaw dropped momentarily. 

"I'm a terrible brother, I know," he bowed his head sheepishly. "But I hope you'll keep letting me try to be a better one."

She blinked, dumbstruck. "I still haven't forgiven you, you know. You were terrible."

"I know."

She turned to Merlin, suddenly suspicious. "What is this place, really? Why is everyone so--" she waved her hands a little, unable to explain.

He almost smiled. "It's time. Time heals all."

"You could let it," Nimue suggested hopefully. "Just let all of the old wounds close here. Let the magic of this place keep them. The world will do so much worse and there will always be plenty to hate and fear. There is no need to carry that hate and fear on its behalf."

Morgana looked at the ground, away from her friend. It was so difficult to think while looking at Nimue. "This is heavy. I need time to think about it." And then she vanished, as if stepping into another place.

Nimue sighed, concerned. "The moments that pass here aren't the same as you will experience when you leave. You can rest here as long as you need. When you leave, it will be as if no time has passed at all."

Arthur nodded. "Is it safe to sleep here?"

"Oh yes," she confirmed, "Quite safe. Safer than your uncle's house."

"Then we will sleep here and leave when we're rested, and bring Gawain back here to you. Is it safe to build a fire?"

She smiled a challenge. "Are you cold?"

"Am I-- No. No, it's not cold at all!" He marveled at this for a moment. "It's not cold or warm or any temperature at all."

"Then go on, build a fire if it makes you feel better, but you'll just be doing a lot of work."

He laughed. 

They settled on the shore and Nimue lazed about with them, and dodged their questions about what she had done since she fell. When they were all peacefully asleep, she slipped back into the lake, and when they awoke, she was nowhere to be seen.


	5. The Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur and Nimue borrow a moment  
> Lancelot tastes what it's like to be a hero, and what's it's like to fail.  
> Merlin does more things he doesn't want to do because he has to do them.

Arthur woke first, and went through all the actions of a normal morning at camp, minus anything that might require water. He was careful to stay well back from the water's edge, and stayed quiet enough not to wake the others. After an hour of listening to no birds and no wind and no waves on the shore and just generally nothing aside from the soft snoring of Lancelot and the periodic snorts and muttering from Merlin, he grew impatient and approached the lake. He didn't intend to touch it, just to look. He craned his neck over the almost pearlescent water, trying to see if there were fish or insects living in it. Just as he leaned precariously forward, Nimue's face appeared in the water, frowning pointedly.

"Don't," she reminded him in a whisper.

"I'm just looking," he told her innocently. "It's _really quiet_ and everything is so still. It's like being inside a painting. I... Well, I got a little bored."

She smiled at him, for a moment becoming the Nimue he remembered. "You do enjoy snooping around. Did you drop some glory or daring feat that you're looking for?"

"Hey now--"

"Some thrilling heroics lost from your pocket on the way?"

He somehow managed to smile disapprovingly. "Unfair."

" _Completely_ fair," she insisted.

"Maybe a little fair."

She laughed quietly and stood up without a sound, water falling away as if it had never touched her. She wrapped him in a close hug and buried her face in his neck. "Oh Arthur."

He hugged her back. "Can't you come with us?"

"If I could, I would have returned to you years ago."

He stiffened in her arms, then pulled away but did not release her. "How long has it been, truly?"

Her smile wavered. "I don't know."

"And you haven't aged a day. It's like no time has passed at all." He sighed.

"As long as there is magic in this place, I never shall. I am part of this place now. If I leave it, it will cease to exist. Time needs a place to flow."

"What happens if it doesn't have a place to go, just for a day?"

She smiled sadly. "It will make what happens to you look like the most normal thing in the world."

"What--" he blinked, tilted his head a little. "Why, what happens to me?"

She tried to keep a straight face, but her smile broke through her will. "If I tell you, it won't happen. And if it doesn't happen, something worse might. But no matter how weird things get, know that it's going to work out in the end. Probably."

He raised his eyebrows. "Probably?"

She shrugged, mock-innocent. "Everything leaves a ripple in the water."

"Can I kiss you?"

She looked over his shoulder. "We'd have an audience."

Arthur turned to look.

Lancelot was awake, but trying his best to busy himself with anything that allowed him to look in the other direction.

Arthur sighed, and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then cleared his throat. "Morning!"

"Morning," Lancelot grunted.

Nimue gave Arthur a little push. "You boys get ready. You have a long way to go, and you'll have to carry a heavy burden on the return trip."

Arthur sighed again, a mix of disappointment and apprehension. "Shall we leave Merlin with you?" He gestured to where the magus was sprawled, taking as much space as he could with his spidery limbs.

Nimue pursed her lips. "I'd prefer if he had as much rest as he could, given what he is recovering from. But without the Sword, he is the only way to recover Gawain from the earth."

Arthur nodded. "Better wake him then."

"Far away is best," she opined.

Lancelot looked over at the wizard, then crept up and dragged his staff away by the bottom. He stood in a crouch as far away as he could get and carefully, carefully nudged Merlin with the top. When that didn't work, he nudged a little harder.

Merlin awoke with a start and grabbed the staff at the close end. He glared.

"Time to go, unfortunately," he informed him, voice quiet but not soft.

Merlin sat up slowly, stretching and yawning. "How lo-- well, I guess it doesn't matter does it." He scratched his chest where there used to be a gaping, poisonous, necrotic hole. 

"You'll be weak for some time," Nimue cautioned. "That was a lot of healing for one body to do."

"I don't want to leave," he told her, straightforward. "I would prefer to stay with you, as long as I can."

She smiled again. "There will be time for catching up. But if you don't remain focused, you will stay here forever and grow old and die here and a mere moment will have passed in the world. And if you all cannot stop what is coming, eventual though it may be, man will come for the magic like they came for the forests and the mountains and the earth, and this place will stop existing." 

He swallowed his grief, and relented. "Let us go quickly then, and return quickly."

"It will be difficult to recognize Uther's camp," she told them. "You will have to work together. You have all the skills you need. Once he is out of the ground, time will resume as normal for him, so you must hurry back."

"We have no horses," Lancelot told her. "Nor mules, nor cart. We came on foot from the Falls, by Merlin's working." He paused, but felt the others waiting for more explanation. "It will be difficult to form a circle."

Arthur shifted his weight to the side uneasily.

"Most of my magic went with the sword," Merlin added. "So we will be on foot. It's not far. A few hours at worst once we're out of the forest."

"I was shocked to learn he survived the Kitchens; I doubt he will be standing or walking anywhere."

"You are right," she confirmed. "I will send you some beasts. They will know the way."

"Thank you," Lancelot told her politely, bowing a little.

She smiled a little back, and curtsied. "You will see them at the edge of the woods."

Merlin hesitated, then swept forward, paused, awkwardly embraced her, and then turned and left without looking back to make sure the others followed.

\-- 

Outside of the ensorceled forest, the sun had set, as if mere moments had passed since they entered it. At the edge of the darkened woods stood two enormous elk, eyes glittering in the half light provided by a dimly glowing stone in Merlin's staff.

Arthur whistled low, impressed. "That's a _elk!_ You must be what, sixteen points, aren't you, you beautiful beast!"

Lancelot, openly non-plussed, stood well back. "Maybe we can just carry him. Make a cot out of the wizard's robes."

Merlin was already at their side. Tall as he was, the top of his head didn't even equal their shoulder. "No, we're not doing that." He held up his arms like a toddler asking to be lifted. It looked ridiculous.

One of the beasts lowered its antlers into his hands, waited for him to get a good grasp, then lifted him towards its back. He threw a leg out and got himself seated. It wasn't graceful as one might expect from a wizard interacting with an enchanted woodland creature, but it worked. "Well?" He prompted. "Are you coming or not?"

Lancelot, surrendering completely to the weirdness, copied Merlin. Once he was seated, the elk both looked at Arthur, seeming unimpressed.

Arthur carefully approached with his arms out, and Merlin's elk took pity on him, slowly offering a horn and very gently lifting him to sit.

Lancelot grasped the elk's neck carefully. "This is so strange."

The elk snorted, and started walking.

\--

It was only two hours by elk-back, and it turned out that elk had pleasantly broad ribcages. It almost made up for the smell. They stopped in the soot-dotted field that had previously been the joint camp. The tents and gear had long since been looted, the ground a mess of mud and coals from campfires, blood and broken things.

Merlin dismounted. "Arthur," he prompted. "If you were in a camp, where would you put prisoners of war?"

Arthur had the decency to look ashamed. "In the most crowded place, surrounded by lots of potential jailers." He slid off the back of the elk and stuck the muddy landing, just and just. "If this was the edge of the Red Palandins' camp," he gestured at a discarded, trampled banner, "--and Uther's camp was near it?" He looked up at Lancelot.

Lancelot pointed east. "About there."

Arthur started walking, a little bow-legged after the ride. "Then we could start over there. We'll need your keen senses again, it appears. I don't see any burial mounds."

Lancelot stayed on the elk, trusting the animal to pick it's way through the mud, until they began seeing Pendragon colors stomped into the dirt. He vaulted down and began to pick around for signs. Where he went, the others quietly followed, patient to let him work. 

This tie, it was Lancelot's turn to gradually lose it as he searched, muttering to himself and moving more and more erratically, until he fell to his knees at a low rise of weeds and flowers, and began scratching and pulling at them. They felt the intrusion and wove tighter together, growing from sod to bramble. "No!" He shouted at them. "Let him free!"

Merlin stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Let me."

Lancelot, a little breathless, working against something in his own mind, sat back hesitantly, noticing the blood from where the thorns and burrs cut into his fingers.

When the tracker was settled and calmer, Merlin stood and reached into the pouch on his belt. He took a handful of white salt, and walked around the mound, sprinkling it in a generous circle. From another pouch, he took a handful of red-brown iron oxide, and scattered it within the circle. Where it fell, the greenery sizzled and withered, smoked and hissed, and it withdrew from the circle entirely. 

Merlin turned to Arthur. "She gave you something."

Arthur widened his eyes, feeling caught. "Pardon me?"

"There is nothing to forgive, but you need to present it to the earth to prove you're here on her behalf. So that the spell will be concluded."

Arthur could feel his cheeks heat up, but schooled his expression carefully neutral. He stepped up to the circle, then knelt and kissed the dirt.

The dirt first heaved up and split in half, then fell away. In the gentle but unstoppable sound of crumbling earth, the dust gave up its burden, and pushed the broken body of the knight back into the realm of the living.

Lancelot pushed past them before he even knew what he was doing, and grasped Gawain's wrist, checked for a pulse. He lay his ear on his chest and listened, watched for a movement at his throat, anything to indicate--

"He's alive," Merlin drawled, "or she wouldn't have sent us all this way."

Lancelot ignored him, thinking over the best ways to move a wounded man, none of which included enchanted elk.

The elk had other ideas about its role in the endeavor. It stepped forward and with all of the improbable grace of a creature that lived in an enchanted forest, scooped the knight into its antlers and raised its head. It snorted hard at the bipeds and stomped one front leg.

"Wow," Arthur couldn't help but say.

"Give me a leg up," Lancelot requested.

Arthur offered a knee and helped push him onto the elk's back, where he barely got settled before the elk took off at an uneven charge back the way they had come. Merlin boarded the remaining elk in his usual way, and leaned down to offer an arm to help Arthur. They trotted after, at a more reasonable pace.

"Oh God," Lancelot muttered, gripping the elk's hide at the neck and holding on for dear life. "Oh Lord oh Hidden oh whomever."

They tore across the field and into the treeline without slowing, at a pace a horse couldn't hope to keep. Branches whipped at the three of them. The ground seemed to disappear under the beast's flying feet. 

Lancelot smelled the willows before they arrived, low hanging tendrils became rasping claws when taken at speed. The beast lowered its head; his sword was in his hand before he could think, slashing the whip-like branches away. He leaned forward, between the elk's antlers and over the knight, close enough that the smell of melted flesh made him gag.

They cleared the willow grove and splashed across a stream without slowing, the moldy smell giving the first signpost of their progress. He ducked close to the elk again, holding the blade away from animal and passenger alike. They veered left around a bend, skirting the branches of Grief and then the beast gave a great heave, vaulting over Ruin and landing lighting on the other side without slowing. 

Then the branches whipping by them quieted, the sounds of the water softened and then silenced. The elk slowed to a canter, then a trot, then paced the last steps towards Llyn Ogwen. And as if the ensorceled forest and the mirror lake needed to be any more like a painting, the elk raised its head as if presenting it's passengers.

Lancelot sat up for a moment, heart pounding wildly, and sheathed his sword. As the elk lowered its head, he caught sight of Nimue, standing like a vision at the edge of the water, and it was if Lancelot himself were presenting the body of the Green Knight to the Lady of the Lake. It was as if for once his story were something different than penance, and it were somehow a higher form of service, a courtly form.

Nimue caught his eye and the moment lingered between the two of them. Then she reached forward and began untangling the unconscious knight from the elk's antlers.

Lancelot slid down from the elk's back and helped her lift him carefully, and almost pulled him into the lake before Nimue planted a hand on his chest and pushed him back. He didn't take offense; instead he backed away and watched, apprehensive and awestruck, and she pulled the lifeless form of Gawain deeper into the lake, placed an arm across his chest, and then dove, pulling him under with her.

Lancelot finally managed to breathe for the first time it what felt like hours. The elk retreated a ways up the bank, and waited for its companion to return.

Merlin and Arthur returned on the other elk, dismounted, and joined him at the spur of land. 

"Did he make it?" Arthur asked.

Lancelot opened his mouth, then closed it, then shook his head. "I don't know."

"She took him into the water," Merlin said, half a question and half a statement.

"Yes."

"She must believe there's a chance."

They gazed at the water. A sinking feeling came over them one at a time. Arthur and Merlin went to sit in the shade at the edge of the trees. Lancelot stood and stared at the surface of the lake, anticipating the least ripple. 

The tension built up inside his chest until it felt like suffocating. He hunched over a little more with each moment that didn't pass, until he simply sank onto his knees to wait, until it hurt badly enough in a way he wasn't used to, that for the first time since he was a child, he began to actually weep.

Nimue's face emerged from the water before him, and there was something in her expression that broke his heart.


	6. A round table discussion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heros admit their own shortcomings, share information, and decide many important things.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed, "I pulled so much time through the wounds but this one didn't, it never went back to the way it was, he won't --" her voice broke and she could only cry. 

With her help, Lancelot had brought Gawain ashore. They laid him on the grass within reach of the water and quickly ascertained that he was, in fact, _alive._ It wasn't apparent why he was unconscious, ashen-faced, and completely unresponsive, or why Nimue was so violently upset.

She curled up and sobbed onto his chest.

Arthur put his hand on her back and spoke soothingly. "Nimue, he's alive, you did a miracle. Why are you crying?"

She inhaled shakily, then spoke as if expelling the words from her lungs. "They broke his back. He cannot walk."

Arthur sat back on his heels and exhaled as if punched in the gut.

Lancelot, still kneeling on the other side of the knight, curled in on himself but didn't make a sound. His ash-streaked eyes closed.

They sat with the news for a long while. Slowly Nimue exhausted herself crying and was able to sit up and accept Arthur's comfort. Lancelot just kept weeping ash tears, but regained his composure enough to croak, "What of the rest of his injuries?"

Nimue frowned. "I was able to heal the worst of them. I concentrated on the most severe wounds, because he had so little strength left."

Lancelot gingerly lifted his tunic and checked the site of where he had stabbed the man mere days before. The wound was covered by fresh scar tissue, pale and shiny. He lifted it a little higher and found angry red burn scars where previously there would have been the ash and melted flesh of the brands. He lowered the tunic respectfully and looked to Nimue. "You did good work," he told her. 

She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.

Merlin stood a ways back. "We should place him in the sun. He is sky-folk, so the light of the sun and stars will help him regain his strength."

Nimue climbed to her feet, backing into the lake until she was knee-deep in the water. She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sky. The sky shifted, the sun rose over the east and shone down on them. She rejoined them on the shoreline and sat, tired by the working. 

Merlin sighed. "There were less dramatic ways to do that."

"Like you're one to talk," she sassed him, but without any edge.

They waited, and rested; talked, and paced. They slept and awoke and ate and washed. Time did and didn't pass. Merlin and Nimue talked and traded stories about the lives they had lived before meeting each other. 

Gawain's color improved; the grey faded, the half-circles under his eyes lightened. He stirred and his breathing changed cadence, but still he slept.

Arthur tried to make conversation with Lancelot but couldn't break him away from his vigil over Gawain. Soot tears continued to roll down the quiet man's cheeks.

"This is my fault," Lancelot said finally, when he couldn't summon an answer to any of the questions Arthur had actually asked. 

Arthur couldn't argue with that, but diplomatically found a way around it. "I don't think he would agree."

"He told me-- after I stabbed him and gave him over to torturers-- that all fey are brothers, even the lost ones. He was the first person who was ever kind to me, and I never deserved it." 

"Gawain is just _good,_ " Arthur told him. "He can be stubborn and kind of a pain in the ass, but it's always for the right reasons. He loves his people so much, and humans have been so endlessly cruel. I am not surprised at all to know that he wanted to free you from them, regardless of your crimes." He chuckled softly. "I don't think _anyone_ was really surprised when you said he'd ransomed you."

They listened to nothing for awhile.

"He's younger than I thought," Lancelot said, sounding distantly surprised. When Arthur raised an eyebrow, he explained. "I always thought him to be many years my senior, and to have the advantage of experience. I've been tracking him for a decade. His name went from annoyance to warning to legend. But he's not some old wardog at all. He's just _tired._ "

"War does that to people."

Lancelot brushed Gawain's hair back from his forehead, away from his face. 

Gawain stirred, and mumbled something.

Lancelot took this as a signal, looking to Arthur to make sure the other man heard, and then shook Gawian's shoulder gently. "Wake up, if you can."

"Hm. No," Gawain grouched, voice raspy, as if he had gargled with a great deal of sand-- which he figuratively had. "-won't do as you say." His eyes opened a crack and he squinted into the morning sky, then at Lancelot's face hovering over him. He flinched hard and grimaced. "What--? What are you doing here?"

He took the knight's hand in his own and gave it a squeeze. "We're gone from there. We're both gone, far from there. You're safe."

Nimue heard the commotion and joined them. "Give him room to breathe," she cautioned.

Gawain squinted at her next, confused. " _What?_ "

"You're at Llyn Ogwen. It's... Something like an hour past daybreak. Everyone is safe for now." She squeezed his shoulder fondly. "How are you feeling?"

"Like burnt horseshit," he admitted with a grimace. "Take... Take care of this ash man, he is one of us."

Nimue smiled. "He rescued you."

Lancelot blushed. Most of it was covered by the ash on his face, but not all. "Arthur found you. Merlin freed you. Nimue healed you."

"Mostly," she added.

"Hm. My thanks." Gawain's eyes closed and opened sluggishly. "I need water."

Arthur brought a water skin from their supplies.

Lancelot lifted him to sit and remained close while he drank.

When he was done, Gawain handed the water skin back and took a better look around. "Llyn Ogwen? How?"

"I ransomed the Sword for you and Squirrel," Nimue explained.

"You--!" He sputtered. "The--!" If he'd had the water skin in his hands still, he might have thrown it.

"It didn't work out," she continued, "They brought you to me from..."

"The Kitchens," Lancelot supplied.

"The Kitchens, right. I couldn't tell if you still lived. I would not have been able to heal you, so I asked the Hidden to hide you in the ground. Then things went even more south, the Paladins attacked the King's camp to get to me and the sword, Morgana became death's Widow, and I killed Father Carden, and then we ran, and a little girl shot me. I fell into the river, and the river brought me here. Over a long time, I met the other Hidden that govern this place, and became their Lady."

He wrinkled his eyebrows thoroughly confused. "How long have I been out?"

"It's... Complicated. In practical terms, less than a week."

He turned to Lancelot, who had stopped breathing. "Ash man, are you well?"

He gave himself a shake. "Yes. Yes, I... Didn't know that Father Carden was dead."

"I saw Squirrel before the end," Gawain told them. "The paladins took him. I wasn't able--"

"He's safe," Lancelot reassured. "I took him from the camp to the beach, to the other Fey. Brother Salt didn't get a chance to hurt him."

He heaved a great sigh of relief and pulled Lancelot into half a hug. "Thank the great river and all the green woods and the stars in the sky for you, ash man."

Lancelot's blush returned twice as hot. He awkwardly patted Gawain on the back. 

Once the relief was adequately processed, he turned to Arthur with a hopeful look. "The ships? Did they make it onto the ships?"

Arthur delivered the bad news about the ships, the good news about the raiders, the bad news about the fight on the beach, and the numbers lost and left. Gawain listened closely to his briefing, becoming more like himself, asking practical questions about their current location, arms, allies, plans, and leadership. 

Merlin filled in the gaps behind the politics and dramatics of Uther, Cumber, and the gold-masked killers from Rome. He told them about the midwife and the queen and the peasant's son, the state of the people's wrath, and their unexpected willingness to side with the Fey Queen.

At the end, he gave Arthur a long and meaningful look. "We need to be back with the others as soon as we can. They cannot return to the forest. The disarray of the Paladins' attack on the king's forces and the confusion around Cumber will buy perhaps a week before they start hunting us again. If I've already been out a week, then they may already be on their way."

"Time doesn't pass here," Nimue reassured. "You may stay and rest as long as you need, and no one will get any closer to the fey."

He sagged forward in relief. Lancelot and Arthur caught him and helped him stay upright. He grasped Lancelot's arm where it was across his chest, and held on to him like an anchor. "What an amazing thing. I am so tired." He met Nimue's eyes next. "Where is that damned sword now?"

"Morgana has it. She's in the wind."

"Good," he huffed. "She can more than defend herself and she at least seems to like Nimue."

Merlin frowned. "She's the Bride, and in league with a demon."

"You're an old genocider and Nimue is bound to a lake. Arthur is a former sellsword of ignoble background. Let's not even get started on our recovering Christian."

Arthur objected, "Whoever has that sword, leads the fey, and becomes the ruler of men."

Gawain laughed, but it sounded painful. "When Merlin had the sword, was he the King of the Fey?"

"Well, no."

"And when Nimue gave the sword to me to inspect, did I become the King of the Fey for the moment until I returned it?"

Arthur scowled. "No."

"Kingship doesn't come from an object. Mankind's opinions of legitimacy are twisted. There is no sword or crown or lineage or document in the world that grants leadership to any soul. It comes from here," he jabbed Arthur in the chest, over his heart, "and here," he jabbed Arthur in the forehead.

Nimue smiled at his monologue. "You are of all of us, best able to lead the fey now."

If he felt Lancelot's arms tighten around him, he didn't say anything about it. "I cannot lead from the ground, and my leadership has only kept us a half step ahead of our pursuers these ten years. We need strategy." He looked to Merlin.

Merlin shook his head. "I am a possessed genocider, as you say, and have these thirty years not done any better at protecting our people. We need legitimacy." He looked to Nimue.

Nimue gestured at the lake. "Stuck in a lake. My magic can't reach far from here, and definitely not out of the forest. We need a messenger, and someone to lead the humans who have joined our cause." She looked to Arthur.

Arthur's eyes widened and he seemed to shrink on himself. "I-- I can't-- I don't even know-- whenever I try to do what's right, I make a mess of things. To do so on behalf of a thousand people or more?"

"Then you must all lead together," Lancelot reasoned. 

They looked at him, then each other.

"A council," Gawain mused, "is not a terrible idea." He leaned against Lancelot for only a second. "We are none of us fit to lead. We're barely fit to be people. If we find someone who is, then surely they will take the lead by virtue of skill. And if we are wanting in some talent, we can add others to the council as we find them, to become closer to perfect with time."

Arthur nodded enthusiastically. "This is a wonderful plan."

Gawain smiled tiredly. "Not the best, but all we can." He raised a fist. "All for the council? Say 'aye.'"

"Aye," Arthur answered immediately.

Nimue approvingly smiled. "Aye."

Merlin grumbled a bit under his breath but nodded assent anyway. "Aye."

Gawain looked to Lancelot.

He blinked owlishly. "Me?"

"It was your idea."

"It was _your_ idea," Lancelot objected. "I just cut your rhetoric short and brought us to the point so I can put you down soon, you weigh a ton."

He ignored the snark. "Join us," he ordered, "And lend us your talents, and all that you will become." 

His commanding tone of voice caused Lancelot's religiously-trained submission reaction to take over almost mechanically. His head bowed and he averted his eyes to the ground, his shoulders hunching forward. He had to catch the words 'yes, Father,' before the tumbled automatically from his mouth.

Alarmed, Gawain squeezed his arm to get his attention. "None of that is necessary anymore," he spoke under his breath, voice rough but warm and soothing. "None of that will ever be necessary again. You are with us now, and all fey are brothers."

It felt like trying to swim from the bottom of a lake: heavy, cold, and inevitable, but the burning in his chest drove him forward, and he reached for the surface, for the air where the others waited.

"Join me," Gawain asked him, so quiet that the words were just for them.

"Yes," he whispered back. Then he raised his voice, breaking the surface of his turmoil to where all was light and warmth. "Aye."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From texts, Lancelot crying over everything and having deep emotional issues is canon. Also, forgetting how to talk, stabbing good guys, and in general being a hot mess. Nimue is basically his fairy godmother. Cute!
> 
> Also canon, Gawain is solar powered and loves his family. ❤️ The more I read, the more I like the guy. I'll have to do something with his "Defender of Women" title and reputation for NOT sleeping with other people's wives. And all that gay coding from the series.
> 
> The next chapters may take awhile, I need to do some research.


	7. The Oak and the Ash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heros spend time and energy staying just one step ahead of the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for emotional exhaustion.

Nimue moved the sky for them so they could wake and sleep in a somewhat decent rhythm. Her magic over the environment of the lake was complete; she could cause fish to leap out and beach themselves, fruit and vegetables to grow rapidly, and forest animals to offer themselves for the benefit of her guests. Only the smallest fire for cooking was necessary, as they were never cold.

Merlin was content to wait as long as the others wanted. He and Nimue walked the entire circumference of the lake, trading knowledge and magic. They practiced on the side of the lake opposite from the "camp," building and destroying and reconstructing and summoning and banishing to their hearts' content.

Gawain practiced moving without the use of his legs. It was exhausting and frustrating, but it had to be done. Lancelot and Arthur hovered nearby, one a portrait of anxiety and the other patient and without judgement. When he tired, they declined together at the forest's edge and talked through every possible scenario they could imagine, planning for the survival of the fey in the face of overwhelming circumstance.

Lancelot provided all the information he could about the power structures and habits of the Red Paladins. While the specifics were useless after the confusion of the attack on Uther's camp and the change in leadership, Gawain was old hat at extrapolating potential attack plans from vague information.

As the sun moved to its "evening" position, Arthur excused himself to have a walk along the lake, while the others continued discussing the relative merits of training a hundred new pikeman out of the hundred and fifty fey to come of age in the next year.

"I was less than Percival's age when I first first learned to hold a sword," Lancelot offered. "It can only benefit them to learn as early as possible."

Gawain made a non-committal noise.

"Is he your son?"

He paused, taken aback by the ninety-degree subject turn. "Percival?" He considered this. "I suppose he is now. He is the son of a very good friend who passed some years ago. By custom he went to live with an aunt, but she uh..." He stalled, realizing that if it wasn't Lancelot that killed her, it was one of the other monks.

"She was killed when we attacked the village," Lancelot drew the conclusion himself. "And Percival made his way to you." He wrapped his fingers in his own hair and pulled hard, reflexively seeking to hurt himself for what he'd done.

Gawain frowned and reached over to cover his hands with his own, disentangled his fingers, pulled them away. "Stop that. It's over."

Lancelot flushed, trapped between being guilty for his past, embarrassed for his response, and confused by the touch and compassion. "I... I'm sorry, I just... I don't even think about doing it."

A thundercloud rolled across Gawain's expression, but he carefully banished it again. He changed the subject to spare them both addressing that darkness. "I suppose Squirrel is my son, now." 

Lancelot took a breath, swimming towards relative normalcy. "You knighted him at this age," he reasoned. "It's not too much to expect to train the other children."

Gawain shifted uncomfortably against the oak tree that kept him sitting upright. "I never claimed to be a _good_ father."

Lancelot laughed, a sound lighter than he was used to making. "Well. You're better than I am, but I'll help you as I can, nonetheless."

"Thank you."

"It's the least I can do, considering."

"Hey," Gawain reached out and grasped his forearm. "I mean it. For everything. For saving Percival and me. For helping me to recover. For joining us. For being so, so brave. Thank you."

Lancelot felt profoundly warm.

"It hardly matters, because you are whole without it, but have you decided a name for this new life? Surely you will leave behind your war title and whatever those loathsome humans called you."

He lifted his chin slightly. "I have. I am Lancelot. The name my mother gave me."

He nodded, and patted his arm, then sat back against the tree again. "An old name. A name that smells like the woods of Normandy." 

"I am from there," he confirmed, feeling the absence of the touch at his arm. "Fa--" he growled at himself. "Carden took me from there as a boy. Used me like a tracking dog."

"Well," he mused with half a smile, "a dog is still better than a human."

Lancelot laughed softly again. "I suppose that's true for most of them."

They sat in companionable silence for a long while, watching the occasional explosion on the other side of the lake.

"It's all so much," Lancelot said, even more quietly than before. "There's so much against us."

"Yes," Gawain allowed himself sound as tired as he felt. "It has always been that way. But now it's against _us._ " He smiled softly. 

The others found their way back, and the sky waned to evening. They ate together and washed and joked together, and drifted off to sleep, shadows of normal life dancing on the edge of a forest where time stood still. 

Gawain sat awake after the others, feeling the need to be alone, even though he knew it would do him no service, ultimately. He had packed away so much grief over his years so that he could make of himself a wall between the world and what was important, that now, having lost his independence and ability to fight, with all the world poised to crush his people, with yet more broken souls to protect, he felt shaken. Cracked. Grief and anger and fear weren't able to overtake the dam, but they washed out of the sides and under it, threatened it's integrity.

So he opened the floodgates a little. He grasped a root of the oak tree with one shaking hand and schooled himself into silence, letting just enough tears out that he could face the future without crumbling. It was a losing strategy, letting just enough of his soul heal from every loss that he could still be the kind of person he needed to be. Eventually he knew it would overwhelm him, just as the war would overwhelm them all. He let his tears water the oak, which would never disclose his heart, until he could surrender to exhaustion again.


	8. Owner of a Broken Hart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which nightmares and reality get too cozy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: DESCRIPTIONS OF TORTURE  
> also, someone gets eaten by a tree.

He knew he was dreaming, but it was difficult to believe himself. The pain seemed so real. He smelled blood and burning flesh, and distantly he heard his own voice screaming itself raw. The long muscles of his legs cramped and twisted, trapped adrenaline and tension and the iron tools of his torturer pulled loose ligaments from their anchor points. A needle of hot metal was driven into the meat of his thigh at regular intervals, then into the pads of his feet. They wrenched loose his toenails and salted the bloody flesh underneath. They poured boiling water and hot oil over his lap. When he blacked out, they forced him back or waited him out. 

And he knew it wasn't real, because in real life, when the pain was about to make his heart burst, they severed the nerve of his back so he could no longer feel his lower body, and they started on the rest of him instead. But in this fresh hell, the severed nerve never came. Instead, even as he struggled against the monster with eyes sewn shut, the green of the ground grew up around his ankles, reached up to his middle, tightened and hardened into brambles until wooded vines pierced his legs and grew into them. His blood flowed over them, into the ground, which swallowed it eagerly and surged up around him, pulling and folding over him and tightening together.

 _You have to ask it,_ a calm voice informed him, incongruously quiet against his own wailing. An elk stood in the tent with him, its deep brown eyes full of lightening and starlight.

 _I cannot ask you for this,_ he gasped.

 _You must,_ the elk replied.

The vines grew around his chest and squeezed and pushed and sank into his heart, grew between his ribs, pressed the air out of him.

_You must ask for help._

The vines grew and pushed him up, shattered him completely, wrapped around his neck and his head and as the last of the light finally vanished, with no lungs left to push air, he mouthed the words. _Please. Help me._

_This sacrifice is enough._

The loudest crack in the world and a burning, blinding white light cut through his skull. 

_\--_

The others awoke to screams such as they had never heard. There was a brief confusion and the sounds of movement, weapons were drawn, then Nimue brought light back to the sky and in the false dawn they saw the source. 

At the foot of the oak, Gawain thrashed against the roots of the mighty tree, which were wrapped around him and over him like a shell, growing even more closely as they watched. He pushed and struggled and screamed, but did not appear to be conscious. 

Lancelot dropped his sword and sprang forward, tearing at the tree with both hands. Nimue slammed her palms down on the ground and reached for the tree, wrestled with the magic of the forest itself. Arthur traded his sword for a log from the fire, and rushed forward to menace the oak. Merlin drew an iron spike out of his robes and advanced on the great tree. 

The tree's branches drew back from Arthur's fire and slapped at Lancelot. It cracked menacingly and drew Gawain into itself, folding wood and bark over him, until he was out of their view and there was only the great oak before them. 

"Stop," Nimue shouted, "Stop, it's trying to protect him. Back away." 

Arthur threw the log out of the way and grabbed Lancelot, physically pulling him away from his frantic work. Merlin backed down, but kept the iron spike in hand. 

Gawain's muffled voice grew silent. In the eerie stillness that followed, into their camp walked the same elk that had carried Lancelot and the Green Knight when they had needed it most. 

It lowered its nose to the roots of the tree and sniffed, paused. Then it raised its face to the sky. With a sound like the world was ending, a bolt of lightning crashed down on it. 

\-- 

Head pounding, eyes dry, throat burnt with ozone, Lancelot stood at the foot of the great oak. A very dead elk lay behind him. He planted both hands firmly on the trunk of the tree, begging. "Please give him back. I don't know what to do without him. I don't know anything without him. Please. Please." 

_He gave enough._

"Let us honor that. Let me. Please." 

_The blood was enough._

"What does that mean? Is it blood you must have?" He drew his knife from his belt and without hesitation sliced a long gash across his hand, and pressed it to the tree. 

_Stop,_ the tree hissed, sounding disgusted. _We have no need of fey blood. You have given us so much already. But you cannot have this one. He cried out to us and we have answered. We will repair his heartwood where Our Lady could not, keep him safe from the blades of men.ññ And you!_

The tree's roots twined around his legs, and branches snaked down to seize his arms, pulling them to the side with unkind force. 

_  
We care not for your intentions, for your drama, only your deeds. The four rivers brought us all of the blood of your war-dead. Elderly and children among them. The ashes of the forest and meadows and the washout of the croplands.  
_

Lancelot didn't struggle or object. "Let my life be enough. Free the Green Knight." 

The branches and roots paused, as if the tree were considering. Then the branches and roots withdrew. 

"No!" He shouted fearfully. "No, take me instead." 

_He struggles even now for you,_ the tree sounded profoundly upset. The wood of the trunk rippled and pulled back, revealing Gawain's face, eyes closed but tension apparent. 

Lancelot threw himself against the tree and touched his face, feeling that the skin still had warmth. A strong breath rolled over his fingers. Then without thinking why, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to those still lips, wishing he could give over his whole soul through that touch. 

The tree hissed, a sound forest fires and wood crackling and popping in flames. It peeled back more layers, revealing the knight and delivering Gawain into Lancelot's arms. _You will provide all that he wants for,_ it ordered. _This is your penance to the Hidden._

"It is my debt to him," Lancelot replied, taking his weight. 

The tree's layers returned to cover the heartwood and then stilled, the oak seeming to become only a tree again. 

Gawain's eyes flickered open, now a startling shade of deep green. He grasped Lancelot's shoulders and made a sound of confusion and surprise. 

_Take care,_ the tree warned, a rumbling voice in the back of his mind. _He is our champion now._

The others recovered more slowly from the unconsciousness from the lightning strike. They awoke to see Lancelot holding Gawain upright, and Gawain standing on his own legs, unsteady as a newborn colt. 


	9. Sovereignty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heros overcome hang-ups because the trees made them do it

Even Merlin was openly shocked at the magnitude of the workings Gawain had accidentally performed. He examined the elk from nose to foot, and then insisted they help him turn the beast to face the west, and scattered five handfuls of soil over it five times, standing in five different locations. He then cut the animal's throat and smeared its still-hot blood on his right hand, pulled what was left of Gawain's bloodied and ruined tunic down from the neck, and planted his hand over the Knight's heart just long enough to leave a bloody handprint.

"What are you doing?" Gawain asked, weirdly calm for someone who had just become un- paralized after being swallowed up by a tree.

"You have no idea," Merlin told him flatly. "Of course you have no idea. You're a soldier. A swordsman. You're not a magus." He went back to the creature and put his knife in its neck, above the chest plate, and dragged it down with all his strength. The bones popped and he removed the knife, then threw his robe off and sank his arm up to the shoulder into the animal's chest cavity.

"What," Gawain repeated patiently, "are you doing?"

Merlin continued to not answer him. "You didn't study or research or apprentice to a master or spend five years underground listening to the Hidden of the earth." The animal's insides made the worst sounds as he fished around in them, then he pulled his arm back, fighting the resistance of arteries and muscles. "You have no _fucking idea_ what you just did. You just stumbled into the enchanted fucking forest and did blood magic, you _giant tool._ Ugh." Finally his hand came free with a nauseating squelch, and he brandished the beast's heart in Gawain's direction. "You have to eat it," he ordered.

Everyone made noises of disbelief and disgust.

"You have to eat it before it stops beating, or it's sacrifice won't last. You'll be right back where you started last night, before you summoned the hart from it's wandering and asked it to _give you its life."_

Gawain swallowed thickly, but reached out to accept the heart. It was indeed still beating. "No chance I could cook it first?"

"NO, YOU OAF."

He looked back and forth between the wizard and the beating heart, praying it was a joke somehow, but he seemed quite serious and Nimue hadn't spoke up to stop them. He grimaced, then took a bite. Blood washed over his chin in a great burst, like he'd bitten into a salty, coppery fruit. The muscles of it still fluttered as he chewed, making him gag. He swallowed the first mouthful, and suppressed a wretch.

"All of it," Merlin ordered.

"Give him a minute," Arthur pleaded, looking green on his behalf.

Gawain continued biting off small pieces, trying not to think about it and failing miserably. It was just an undercooked heart, he told himself. A particularly rare piece of what he normally ate anyway. It was usually a treat to have something so fresh from a kill, except that it was _still moving_ like it was struggling to escape his throat, beating against his stomach. 

He gagged. 

"Swallow it," Merlin ordered harshly. "Or you'll never stand again."

He did, and finished the task, blood all down the front of him. He swallowed down more heaves until his eyes stopped watering. "Ugh. That was... Really disg--" a sensation as hot as the heart had been, fluid as the blood, spread inside of him, settling around his spine just above his hips, where the wedge had been driven between his vertebrae. Then it reached down both of his legs, heating the muscles that had snapped and coiled on themselves, the wounds where the blind monster had sliced through flesh and tendons and arteries. And it definitely heated the sensitive regions where he previously had been burned with oil. He felt hot all the way down to his toes. "--oh?"

"What's happening?" Lancelot asked him carefully. 

"It worked," Merlin declared, relieved in spite of his annoyance. "And that's the end of _that._ How you summoned a fucking _Inifri duir_ is still beyond me. I have tried and tried to enlist their help." He marched up to Gawain and stood closer than was strictly necessary, bullying Lancelot out of the way. "How did you do it? Tell me everything you did."

"I lay at the foot of the oak tree and I wept," Gawain whispered to him, not yet ready to share that with everyone.

Merlin rocked back on his heels, considering this. 

"The tree told me that the blood he offered was enough," Lancelot volunteered, warily putting himself between the wizard and the knight. "It didn't want to let him go at first, but I offered myself in exchange, and then it said 'even now he struggles for you,' and let him free. Then it warned me to be careful, for he was now his champion."

"That's news to me," Gawain grouched.

"You're leaving something out," Merlin muttered to Lancelot.

"I'm leaving a lot out," he answered smoothly and dangerously. "But the rest is between me and the tree."

He sighed. " _Fine_ but if you promised anything to that tree, every tree and shrub and twig on this isle will hold you to your word."

"It is welcome to do so. I meant every word," he declared hotly.

Merlin groaned.

Gawain took his elbow with his less bloody hand. "Lancelot, what did you promise?"

Lancelot stood very still and made eye contact but did not answer.

"Walk with me," Gawain invited patiently. They walked a little ways around the lake, leaving the others behind them. When everyone was sufficiently out of earshot, he asked again. "Please tell me if you can. What did you promise to the tree?"

He remained stubbornly silent.

"Please," he asked more gently. "The wizard had no reason to lie. You may be in danger. Please, friend, trust me to help protect you."

Lancelot's brain stumbled over the words. It was completely unfair, he thought, that the Green Knight with his feats and his completely godless Goodness could reach into him and take him apart at the seems with just his words. He didn't raise his voice or demand or order or threaten like everyone else in Lancelot's experience. He just asked. Offered. Gave. 

Gawain waited patiently, and Lancelot hated him for that, too.

"I promised to provide you all that you want for," he admitted.

Gawain blew out a lungsworth of air very slowly, considering all the ways that vague promise could be interpreted by woodland spirits. "That's... that's a weighty vow. I am wanting in many aspects."

Lancelot lifted his chin defiantly. "You can't tell me you don't deserve it."

"Well, I don't deserve it," he pointed out, exasperated.

"It's too late for that now."

Gawain clenched his hands into fists and the usual tension returned to his shoulders. He reached out for Lancelot, but for the first time the other danced away from him. "I need you to stop making things worse for yourself."

"You need to tell me what you need," he sassed back. "You need to accept help _before_ a tree _eats you alive._ "

"Or you," he barked back.

"Yes." Lancelot confirmed. "Or me. If that's what it takes."

His jaw closed with a click, and he stepped back.

"What I've witnessed in the last week told me more about you than ten years of hunting you ever did. More than your legend ever could. You gave your body and your blood to ransom your jpeople, to free me. You died and rose again. You forgave me," his voice broke, but he rallied it and pushed on because there was too much to be left unsaid. "I worked my whole life to earn the forgiveness of the divine and committed countless sins to forgive my original sin of being born the wrong way, and never did I taste the forgiveness that was promised. Then you come along and give of yourself and cleared my eyes with your words, and gave me forgiveness without anything at all in return, you, just some mortal fey." He took a deep breath. "If that's not worthy of my meagre promise then I am lost to the ways of this world."

Gawain took another step back. "I... Don't know what to say."

"Only tell me what you need," Lancelot insisted. "And to my last day I will provide it."

He licked his lips, not even tasting the blood anymore. "I... I need some time."

Lancelot turned on his heels and marched away, farther from the camp and Gawain.

\--

Merlin sat on the spur of land and skipped stones across the lake, peevish grumbling practically emanating from him. Nimue sat nearby, lost in thought.

Arthur stood around awkwardly, making it a point to avoid the great oak and the bloodied corpse of the elk. "So... If the elk died so he could walk, what did the tree do?"

"It protected him," Merlin explained.

"From what?" Arthur eyed the tree line nervously, wondering if he'd been mistaken about their safety the entire time.

Merlin clicked his tongue and skipped another stone. "That isn't mine to share. But it was a relatively reasonable thing for an inifri duir. I'm frankly shocked it didn't simply turn him into a tree." He tilted his head, popping his neck loudly. "Now we get to find out what new weirdness he got when he was made the duir's champion. It's probably invulnerability or endurance or feats of strength or something suitably oak-like."

Arthur sat next to Merlin on the spur. "What do you think Lancelot promised it?"

Nimue coughed politely. 

Merlin ignored her. "Probably swore his loyalty to Gawain. In a sense. If we're all very lucky, he was clever and specifically promised to follow Gawain in battle. Doubtful."

Arthur watched Nimue's polite blush. "And if we're having the usual amount of luck?"

Merlin smirked and pointed at Nimue.

"His hand," Nimue replied, trying to bury a smile.

"Ohhhhh noooo!" Arthur laughed. "How will we organize a joining at a time like this?"

"I'm glad you two think it's funny," Merlin grinned in spite of himself. "I give them forty-eight hours before either a tree falls on Mopey or Grumpy beheads him just to get free."

Nimue giggled. "I can negotiate with the oak spirit to make the agreement more specific, but Lancelot needs to come up with the specific terms. Otherwise, the only way to break the agreement is to destroy the tree, and I don't think that tree is going down without a fight." She pulled a face suddenly. "Oh no. I'll return soon. He's trying to wash that awful tunic in my lake." She slipped back into the water.

Arthur waited a moment after he left. "So, I think he might actually prefer men."

"Shocked," Merlin drawled.

"He-- really?"

"No."

\--

"Stop," Nimue told him. "Just... Let that thing go. It's well and truly dead, we'll figure out something else. And put it back away from the water. Thank you."

Gawain threw the shirt away and sat back, a portrait of exasperation. "Why did you send them to take me out of the ground if it was going to be this way?"

"Because you're like my brother and I love you," she told him. "Leaving you in the ground would have been giving you up for dead."

"Death was peaceful," he sighed. "Death was quiet. I could've... Just forever." He ran a blood-sticky hand through his hair. 

Nimue gestured to him. "Come here. Let's clean you up. It's going to be fine."

He allowed her to lead him into the lake by one hand, and voluntarily sank in until he was completely underwater. He stayed there until his lungs burned, then surfaced and scrubbed the blood off his face.

Nimue gestured for him to sink down a little, and started working the blood and tangles out of his hair. "Do you want a braid?"

"Who taught you to braid?" He groused.

"You taught me to braid," she chuckled.

"That's right." He swatted her hand, splashing her in the face in the process. "No, that doesn't mean braid it, Nimy."

She sputtered, then splashed back twice as hard.

He grinned and messed up her hair with one hand, then fled out of the lake to he sand where she shouldn't reach.

"Cheating," she huffed. 

His face fell. "I suppose it is." He came back to sit in the shallows with her.

"What strange times these are," she mused. 

"I suppose you'd know."

"I suppose I would."

He sat and breathed for awhile, enjoying the feeling of smallness that came from looking across the water of the lake, where all the land rose above them and all the sky too. "We have to go back to save them," he said, for once not sounding exhausted, but determined. "And I am alive. You are alive. We both have more power than we dreamed of, before."

"Which is weird," she interjected.

" _So_ weird," he agreed. "The sword remains with a friend of the fey. The humans are waking up to the dangers of the church. And there is so much still to do. A week ago, I thought I was going to die, and I was at peace."

The weight of that sank in Nimue's chest. "Gawain, I-"

He held up a hand to stop her. "It's alright. You could not have known. I didn't tell anybody. But I was so very tired. Every friend I lost along the way, every member of our dwindling family, I kept them here," he pointed at his chest, below his heart. "I saw them in my nightmares. Every person I didn't save. The choices I've had to make have been monumentally unfair. These lives or those lives. One friend or three allies or five survivors or seven children who might make it a few months more. Stay the camp to let them rest. Move the camp to keep them safe. Die by sword and fire, or hunger and sickness. Appease a tribe at the detriment of another because we need their swords. And every trade took a piece out of me because I knew that there are no winners. No answer is the right answer, just less wrong." He ran his fingers through his now-clean hair.

"That's what the oak spirit healed in you," she realized. "Those missing pieces that you filled up with grief."

He nodded.

"I'm so, so sorry that I failed to see that." Her eyes grew bright with tears. "I'm so sorry I couldn't heal those wounds."

He smiled at her, then pulled her in for half a hug, rocking her gently as she wept for him. "Oh you. I never told you and I never would have told you. I had so much hope that we were coming to the end of the war, with you in the lead. Stop your tears if you can, we are through it now." He kissed the top of her head comfortingly. "Shh."

"You'll have to do better at telling someone about that, now," she sniffled.

Gawain heaved a big sigh. "That boy." He knitted his eyebrows together. "He doesn't know what he's done."

"He seemed vehement and sincere to me, if a bit catty."

"He's traumatized. The things they did to him... He doesn't need to be taking care of anyone. We should be taking care of him."

She spread her hands palm-up. "Maybe both are the right answer, this time."

"I can't ask that," he scoffed.

"Why not?"

"You _know_ why not. The people who savaged him left him with strange ideas of what is good and what is evil. He hurts himself because he thinks it good. He will never be able to fulfill his promise, because it requires what he believes to be evil."

She shook her head. "You stubborn lout." 

"Rude." He released her and gave her a gentle push on the arm.

"I don't think it will be as great an obstacle as you seem to expect. He tied himself to you freely. You're as good as joined already."

Gawain groaned and fell backwards into the lake, letting himself float slightly. "May the lands take me, I think we need your father's help to get out of this one."

Nimue laughed and pushed him farther into the lake with one foot. "You need _my_ help. The Hidden in this forest are my subjects."

"How is it you end up queen wherever you go, Nimy?" He demanded. "Do you just boss them into submission or what?"

She leaned forward and dunked him.

\--

Lancelot came back to the camp when Nimue turned the sky from afternoon to dusk and then to night. The others were gathered on the spur of land, each as clean and tidied as they could manage, around a tiny fire that provided a small circle of warm light. Nimue stood in the lake, Arthur to her right and Merlin to her left. Gawain stood, shirtless but clean, with a blanket draped over his shoulders, between them all. 

"What's this?" He asked suspiciously. 

Gawain held out his hand, an invitation. He looked uncharacteristically nervous.

Lancelot approached slowly, his hand drifting to the hilt of his sword. He stopped a few places away, wary as an animal outside the circle of a campfire. "Is this it?"

They exchanged looks.

"Is this where you end me?" He pressed. "I've overstepped."

Merlin rolled his eyes.

"You have," Nimue agreed.

"And how!" Arthur confirmed.

"But no one will end you tonight," Merlin promised.

Lancelot met Gawain's eyes. Against his better judgement-- everything was against his better judgement when this sky man was involved-- he abandoned his sword and reached for the hand instead. 

Gawain pulled him closer but not inescapably. "I need to know if this promise is what _you_ want."

Lancelot frowned impatiently. "Why would that matter? It's already been promised."

He shook his head once. "I don't care. If you don't want this, I will drive the iron spike into the tree myself. You are a whole being and what you want, your boundaries, your sovereignty, will always be important. That is _my_ promise."

The former monk froze. 

"If this is not what you want, Nimue can negotiate with the oak spirit to change the terms of your promise, or I can drive the iron spike into its heart myself and free you of all obl-"

"No." Lancelot interrupted him. "It did for you what I could not. I will keep my word, though you are no woman, and I shall surely be more am abomination." He stepped forward into the other's space.

Gawain dropped his hand, held them both at his sides, stepped back. "That is not the same as wanting."

Lancelot's heart pounded in his ears the way it usually did when he was in danger. He felt in the pit of his stomach like he was about to do something incredibly stupid, but it wasn't the only feeling in the pit of his stomach. He stepped forward again, putting both hands on Gawain's face, forcing him to look him in the eye. "I have never," he growled, "wanted anything more in my life."

His face was so close, the blue of his eyes almost black in the half-light and the pale of his skin nearly glowing. He smelled of smoke and his hands were unusually hot. It took a long time for Gawain to work through all of that and process what he had said. "You--- oh. Oh!" He surged forward, his arms reaching to pull him closer, his face crashing into Lancelot's.

Merlin threw his hands in the air. "I now pronounce you joined in the eyes of these witnesses, before the Hidden and the spirits of this place."

They separated, Gawain giving him plenty of opportunity to back away. "Sorry, I just-- yes?"

Lancelot stared back at him, overwhelmed.

"Is that a yes?"

He recovered his breath. "That's a yes."

Gawain laughed a full laugh and squeezed his sides affectionately. "Who witnesses this joining?"

"I do so witness this joining," Nimue shouted joyfully over the laughter.

"And I second," Arthur added gleefully.

"It is done," Merlin declared. "Go forth in joy." He grumbled a little more to himself but smiled in spite of it.

Lancelot shocked them by dead-lifting Gawain over his shoulder and carrying him away from the spur, out of the circle of light. The last they heard of the two of them was bellowing laughter and boisterous shit-talking that dissolved into something much softer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to fold in elements from The Marriage of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, which is a little bit sketch around the topic of gender roles, as well as his overall reputation.
> 
> This is not the last chapter, by the way; tomorrow you will get a sex scene at the very least.


	10. THE RATING HAS CHANGED FOR THIS CHAPTER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end and the endest.
> 
> This one is everyone happy and then no one happy. If you're only in it for a happy ending, stop at the end of the sex scene. If you want something that makes your chest hurt, read to the bottom of the page.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS:  
> MALE ON MALE SEX  
> BDSM  
> HAIR PULLING  
> SCRATCHING  
> ORAL SEX  
> TRAUMA  
> BLOOD
> 
> \--
> 
> MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH.

Lancelot set Gawain on his feet, a determined look on his face. He practically burned from the inside, staring thirstily at his new partner as if he were a stream in the middle of the desert. But he hesitated a moment longer than was strictly normal.

Gawain lifted his hands carefully. "You've never done this before with a man. Have you laid with a woman?"

Lancelot shifted uneasily, but did not retreat.

"That's fine," he tried his best to keep the low growling quality out of his voice, but it was difficult. "We go at your pace. We do what you want. If there's anything you don't want, just tell me, and it will never happen."

Lancelot licked his lips, considering. "I want to tie your hands."

Gawain's eyebrows headed for his hairline. "Yes. Yes, that's fine." He pulled his belt from his pants slowly, and offered it to him.

The pale man took the belt carefully, fingertips barely grazing his hands. Then he grabbed Gawain's forearms roughly, bound them with the belt as if he'd done it a thousand times. Which he had. He stepped forward, pushing Gawain back with his closeness until he slipped a leg and a hip behind him, and with hardly any effort, pushed him from his center of balance and to the ground.

Gawain hadn't even known he wanted this, but in that moment he couldn't deny that he somehow always had. He watched as if he couldn't believe his luck as Lancelot removed his clothing, discarding it just anywhere. 

Then Lancelot was on him, straddling his middle and yanking his arms over his head. "Don't touch," he warned.

Gawain growled, frustrated. Oh how he wanted to. Rough hands undid his trousers, yanked them down so roughly that he grunted in pain, but he didn't ask to stop.

With everything laid bare between them, Lancelot suddenly stopped.

He waited patiently. "What do you want?" He purred, but watched the storms behind his partner's eyes. "Do you want to touch or be touched?"

"Yes," Lancelot hissed. "Both. Neither. All."

Gawain grinned, showing his teeth. "Try them one at a time. Tell me which you like the best."

"I want... I want to hurt you." He looked away, suddenly ashamed. "I don't know--"

"I want you to," he groaned, moving his hips suggestively. "I want you to take me apart. Then I want to take you apart."

"You already have," he admitted, returning his gaze to Gawain's golden face. He lunged forward, not really kissing so much as biting and pulling. He tasted the other's blood, swallowed the other's grunt of pain as his lip tore. He dug his fingertips into Gawain's healed sides, dragged angry red scrapes into his flesh.

"Oh," he gasped. 

Lancelot hesitated. "Too much?"

"More," Gawain begged, more growl than words. "Break me."

He smiled wickedly. "Is _this_ how you survive it all?"

"I prayed for death, then. I want this to go on longer." He shifted until he could get a leg around Lancelot, dragging him closer 

"No!" Lancelot lashed out at the leg, grinding his thumb into the meat of it.

Gawain hissed and dropped his head against the ground. "As you say."

Lancelot leaned in close again, biting his neck and shoulder hard enough to break the skin. "Is this what you want for?"

"Yes," he gasped, a door opening in his mind. Something he'd locked away so he could survive, was terrifyingly free now. "I want to surrender. I want you to take whatever you want from me. This body is--" his breath caught as teeth closed around a nipple, hard enough almost to snip it clean off. "This body is just a vessel. Take me out of it."

Lancelot travelled lower, dragging his own groin against his partner's leg, a promising cock bumping against his flesh but never grinding. He closed a hand around Gawain's testicles and squeezed.

Gawain shouted and sat up too fast. A hand on his chest and a growled threat stopped him.

"I've waited for this moment for ten years," Lancelot told him, voice smooth but thin, hungry. "I never knew why I wanted it so badly, but I did. I always have." He yanked the belted hands back up, wrenching his arms just enough, then closed his mouth around his prize. 

Gawain shuddered, skin shivering like a horse in winter. He carefully restrained himself from moving, letting his partner do as he wished. Just as he was gaining enough composure to plan his next words, Lancelot applied his teeth to the job. He choked and slammed his head backward, into the ground.

Pleased with the reaction, he watched his partner struggle and flail deliciously. He repeated the action a few more times before he judged Gawain to be adequately incoherent, then he pulled his mouth away and kissed the inside of his hip tenderly. "They told me I had to hurt myself, so I will seek pleasure instead." On hands and knees, he climbed up Gawain like he were a tree. "They pulled my hair," he took a handful of Gawain's hair and wrenched it, pulling his head back and baring the long, rough line of his throat. "They whipped me and struck me." He released the locks and smashed his hand across his jaw, striking hard. 

Gawain moaned, eyes glassy, giving up on trying to understand any more of what was happening. Trying to breathe through it.

"So you're not going to do that to me," Lancelot growled.

"Never," Gawain promised, blood from his torn lip and nose dribbling across his chin. He smiled at him fondly. 

"They told me I had to hate you," he growled, inches away from his face. "So I'm going to love you."

"Do it," Gawain dared him, tugging at the belt wrapped around his wrists.

And the rest of the night was unbearably sweet.

\--

Many years later, Gawain returned to Llyn Ogwen, and knelt at the foot of the great oak. A torrent of rain had been falling all day, washing the rivers together; Grief and Loss and Ruin joined with Time. He grasped the root of the tree once again, where he had accidentally performed blood magic.

Lancelot and Guenivere's affair had broken open something in him that didn't burn like it had burned in Arthur's heart. Arthur, enraged, had commanded Gawain and others to pursue Lancelot to Normandy, where he fled from the consequences of his actions. Gawain had refused. How could he harm the man he loved, who had once loved him? To raise a sword would have been the death of them both.

To no one's surprise, Lancelot had slain all of the knights Arthur threw at him. Gawain and Merlin talked Arthur down from his anger, promising that they would make it right somehow. 

So they came back to where it started. Gawain knelt at the foot of the tree and closed his eyes to the rain pouring over him, and asked the inifri duir for understanding, for forgiveness. Then he stood, and drew an iron spike and a short-handled hammer from his belt. 

Merlin stood behind him, ready to assist if Gawain could not finish the job.

He raised his hand, point towards the tree.

"Stop!" Lancelot's voice tore across the lake, across his heart, and it sounded like it tore itself in two. "Stop, Gawain, stop!"

Gawain ignored him, and set the spike against the tree. The tree hissed and smoked, but did nothing to stop him. It understood. He drew the hammer back.

"I love you. Stop."

He struck it with the hammer, and he felt the blow vibrate through him.

"Please stop."

He struck again with all his strength. Blood blossomed from his chest, and he grit his teeth against the pain.

"No!" Footsteps, then an impact as the tree swung a branch and caught Lancelot neatly across the chest, throwing him clear.

Gawain swung again with a roar. The spike broke through the living wood and into the tree's heart. He choked on a mouthful of blood. His knees gave out. 

The tree reached down with two branches and up with its roots, embracing his dying body, pulling it closer. It wrapped around his arms, holing the spike in place and his hand around the hammer.

Gawain managed a bloody, grateful smile, and reached for the final peace. He swung one last time before his strength failed him. The spike split the heartwood of the great oak, killing them both together, and letting Lancelot free of his promise

The sky split open, and a bolt of electricity came down, split the tree in two. When the smoke and steam cleared, there was nothing left of the Green Knight, and only the splinters of the tree.

Arthur, flanked by what was left of the Knights of Camelot, found a weeping Lancelot crouched in the ashes of the tree. Merlin sat at the lakeside, staring over the waters. 

He stood behind Lancelot and gathered the will to speak. "He was the best of us."

Lancelot sobbed harder.

"He once told me there are no winners in war, and no losers in love. He was wrong. There are no winners in love, either." Arthur started hard at Lancelot's back, willing him to feel it, but he knew there was only one thing he could feel now. "Let's call this the end. There will be no more hate between us. He has ransomed you once again. But never appear before me, never cast your shadow over my doorstep, and do not think for an instant that you are welcome in my kingdom."

Lancelot wept at the ruins of the great oak for two more days.


End file.
